The theme is how to light portraits on location using both flash as well as mixed lighting technique, an ever popular approach which gets tackled every year in my workshops.

Bust!

Bust! was shot on the top floor of Alaska Works in south east London, a former fur warehouse converted into smart apartments that was caught up in the financial crisis. Oddly enough I opted to use a Fuji 617, 90mm using Ilford FP4, 1/8sec, f11 2/3. The model (actually Steve Devane, my art director on this occasion) holds a portable flash that came from The Flash Centre. Proessing and printing by Adrian Ensor.

Some days it feels as though ‘busy’ should be my middle name. Running a business is a challenge at the best of times and the advent of new technology makes me realise that there is now more to do and more frequently. Web sites, blogging, phone calls, new business leads, research for workshops, lesson planing, it’s never ending. In between all of this I still have to find time to shoot fresh images and have a personal life. Challenging or what?

La Resureccion make final preparations, Seville 2012

I’ve had a busy spring with workshops in Spain and England. As soon as my university teaching ended and I’d wrapped up the Avebury light painting shoot (see earlier post) I was off to Andalucia with a small group to shoot landscapes in the White Villages.

Cloud descending

From our base in Grazalema we went out each day shooting both classic landscapes, villages, cork oak forest then detail shots of walls, corrals, old houses, etc. One whole day was spent in the beautiful Moorish town of Ronda where the tapas are absolutely divine.

Ronda, poppoes

This was a successful tour and it’s my intention to run it again at the same time of year in 2013 so keep an eye out for it or contact us for details.

From Grazalema I moved up to the Alpujarras. This is an area I’ve travelled in previously and I needed time to do research with a view to taking a group both there and to Granada in the future. This area is very special for me, as is most of Spain.

Tres mantillias

As Easter was unusually late this year I finished my extended Spanish trip with a vey intense 5 days leading the Semana Santa workshop in Seville. Admittedly I returned home exhausted, especially after working through the nights and managing only fitful siestas, but I got a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction from it as did those who came along for the photography. Come along next year and experience it for yourselves.

The morning after returning to London it was back in to university to kick off the new terms work for the second year BA students with two extended advertising photography projects which they are engaging with passionately.

Until 16 June 2012 Snap Galleries in London’s Piccadilly Arcade is playing host to perhaps the first thorough retrospective of the work of Gered Mankowitz’s work in the music industry.

This is a must see exhibition for die hard music fans and photographers alike. On display are prints ranging from the early days of Gered’s career with imaginative and powerful portraits of PP Arnold, The Yardbirds and The Spencer Davis Group, through to later material with Kate Bush, The Jam and Eurythmics. Not to mention Gered’s now seminal images of both The Rolling Stones in 1965 and Jimi Hendrix when he first came to London. I even worked on some of these sessions so the memories come flooding back!

Perhaps two of my all time favourite shots get an outing in this show, both are little seen shots of Eric Clapton and Buddy Guy from Supersession in 1969, a TV special that I think was recorded at Twickenham Studios. I like them because when I first saw them on the lightbox they were completely unknown to me and there’s a calmness about Eric that pervades the photograph. As one of Gered’s former assistants I spent time with him sorting many of these negatives then making contact prints, what more could a rock n roll junkie ask for? And as I’d had a misspent youth trawling the record shops of Wolverhampton, Birmingham and Soho gazing at album photos and reading liner notes many of the images I saw in the Rembrandt Bros darkroom where more than familiar.

So if your able to make it before the closing date make a point of getting along to Snap and get yourself a slice of this great show.

Ojos Rojos is a new online photography magazine coming out of Madrid and it launched this week, 7 May 2012. It’s the brainchild of Mili Sanchez (commercial portrait photographer) and Mike Steel (photojournalist) who have worked extensively across Spain and into Latin America. Mili’s background is originally in graphic design, Mike learnt photography as an assistant in London before heading off to spend more than a year in Colombia where, due to his connections with EFE, he did shoots with both the drug cartels and government paramilitaries. Later moving on to Latino barrios in the Greater Los Angeles area he shot everything from street gangs to beauty parlours. In 2007 he published a photographic anthology entitled, ‘Myself When I Am Real’.

The magazine’s intention is that it stands out and is different to the others out there. They are actively looking for peoples participation through ideas, images, diary events, etc and they state categorically that they wish to act as a forum along the lines of an early 20th century cafe for the exchange of ideas to aid learning. That which in education is referred to as a community of practice; precisely the same intention that we have here at Shadows and Light.

All photographic styles are welcomed and encouraged yet they feel that the most important element has to be that the images they publish transmit emotion. I couldn’t agree with them more. The have an additional intention to act as a photographic bridge between Europe and Latin America.

They’ve also told me that they plane an English language version in the near future. However beware, or I’ll start writing my posts en castellano and Matt will switch into italiano!

If any of those of you reading this feel inspired then why not submit some images for one of their up coming issues?